Clawing Free

by Josh Roberts

  Mia heard her sister sniffling as she cried softly beside her. She felt around under the covers until she found Lissy’s hand and squeezed it.

  “Hey, kid.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He held you too.”

  Mia pulled her close as Lissy began to weep.

  5

  August 17, 2019

  When Lissy awoke, she was in a daze, barely able to force her eyes open. Neil was asleep in the chair beside the couch. The room was completely still aside from the soft rising and falling of his chest. She regretted texting him. She’d been freaked out by the body, and then with the weird vision the night before. It felt like she was somehow becoming reliant on him in a way that she wasn’t comfortable with. She didn’t want to need anyone. But, somewhere deep within the confines of herself, Lissy also felt a sense of great gratitude for Neil. He’d always been there for her.

  Sitting up too fast, her head began spinning and she almost blacked out. She remembered that she hadn’t eaten since before she left home for the bluff the day before.

  The bluff. Her mind swirled with sleepy memories of being squeezed so tight she’d burst. She also recalled the odd sense that someone—something—had desired her to stay when she’d been about to leave the lake. Lissy didn’t want to think about it anymore. Nor did she want to think of the dead woman with her face ripped off, laying in the mud being picked apart by birds.

  Finally, the light-headedness wore off, so she attempted sitting up again, slower. She realized her clothes, and the couch beneath her, were filthy. Glancing at Neil, she noticed his shirt was covered in mud as well, no doubt from him carrying her to the sofa. His eyes flitted open and locked on Lissy, who was now sitting upright.

  “How do you feel?”

  “I’m okay.” She hesitated and then added, “Thanks, Neil.”

  “It was nothing. You can always call me.”

  She looked around the apartment absentmindedly. “We’re gonna have to get you a cot in the corner.”

  “Oh, but your chair’s so comfy.” He grinned, then his posture shifted. “You wanna talk about last night?

  “Not really.” She looked down at her hands, suddenly overwhelmed with anxiety over the events of the last two days. She knew she probably should discuss all of it, but she hated interpersonal conversation. The desire was there though . . . she wanted to tell him.

  He patted her leg. “You hungry?”

  “You have no idea.”

  He stood. “Hope you don’t mind the same breakfast two days in a row.”

  “Beggars can’t be choosers.”

  He shouted on his way to the kitchen, “Sure can’t!”

  She smiled. That was twice in two days. Two horrible days, and yet more smiles than she remembered in the past year. And it wasn’t even that Neil had said anything all that funny. It worried her. The feeling of growing closer to Neil—even in the slightest—put her on edge. His older brother had been a suspect in the murder of her sister. And, while she never believed David to be the killer, she still hated him for not protecting Mia. She didn’t want to allow herself to be close to anyone in the way that Mia had with David, or her mom had with her dad for that matter. Love always ended in pain.

  On the other hand, Neil had been there for her through Mia’s funeral and the funerals of her sister’s friends. He was with her the day her mom moved out of Mitchum and Lissy needed help moving into her own place. He’d always been there for her, and that meant something to someone who had lost everyone else. But it also scared her.

  “You’re staring at the wall.” He put a coffee mug in front of her face.

  “It’s a nice wall,” she said, taking the mug. “You’re gonna lose your job if you keep calling off to make me breakfast.”

  “Nah. I’ve got an in with the owner.” He walked back to the kitchen.

  “At a minimum, he’ll start wondering what you and I have going on up here,” she said.

  “Oh, he knows. I told him exactly what we’ve been doing.”

  “Which would be?”

  He rounded the couch with an omelet. “Making breakfast.” He grinned mischievously.

  She rolled her eyes as she laid a throw blanket across her legs, took the plate, and sat it on her lap.

  “I bet you make all the girls breakfast when they text you in the middle of the night.”

  “There are no other girls,” he said, not missing a beat.

  She looked up from her plate, caught off guard. He froze, watching her eyes as she took in the words. He meant it; she knew that. She could feel herself shaking. The relationship she’d been fighting for years seemed to have just gone from zero to sixty in two days. She considered the irony of Neil being the sole person who could bring on the exhilarating, yet unwanted, feeling of butterflies in her stomach. He had suffered just as much heartache as she had in his life—his parents having died when he was only a child and his brother being the suspect in her sister’s murder investigation. Yet he’d always maintained a firm resolve to be hopeful, not just for himself, but for her as well.

  Finally, she defused the situation. “I’ll bet you tell all the girls that.” He followed her lead and let the statement die, not one to force the issue. Although, he also wasn’t one to give up either. Neil had been pursuing her for years. She’d just always assumed he dated other women too. But his statement expelled that idea from her mind. She felt terrible that he was so attached to her while she’d proven incapable of connecting with him on that level. And what was worse, he always remained so calm and never pressured her about it. He was maddeningly sweet.

  * * *

  Lissy thought the shower would help. But cleaning off the mud, sweat, and day-old makeup did nothing to rid her mind of the memories. Her thoughts were a chaotic mixture of Mia, the body she’d encountered, being squeezed to death in that strange vision, and a general sense of confusion about all that had happened in the prior two days. She hadn’t realized just how long she’d been standing there, motionless, until the water ran cold.

  As she toweled off, she considered that the stress induced by the anniversary of Mia’s brutal and unsolved murder had simply been too much for her mind to take in. Likely, there was no connection between the things happening to her and Mia’s death. It was just lack of sleep, fueled by a lifelong desire for closure about her sister, that had brought on the vision.

  Pulling on a pair of jeans and a warm plaid shirt, she pushed the thoughts of a mental breakdown aside. When she finally came out of the bathroom, Neil had already cleaned the entire living room. He even tried to scrub the mud out of the couch cushions with soap and water.

  “Now you’re just sucking up,” she quipped.

  “You just keep a dingy apartment. I can’t help but wanna clean it.”

  She gave him a gentle shove. It surprised both of them. She made a mental note to not play into his emotions in the future.

  He looked her up and down, noting her outfit. “Where are you headed?”

  “Porter wanted to ask me some questions about last night. I don’t want to keep him waiting.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “No, you’ve already done too much.”

  “I don’t mind—”

  “I’d rather go alone.” She pulled on a baseball cap and threaded her ponytail through the back. Neil must have caught the subtle quiver in her voice and the fear in her eyes because his countenance shifted.

  “You’re not alone, Lis. You don’t have to be.”

  She stared at him. She felt alone. “I know,” she said, just to end the exchange.

  He opened the door. “Remember, I have been there. We’ve been there together. You know everything I’ve been through, and I know the same about you. So, when you need to talk, I’ve got two ears.” He took a step closer. “Don’t shoulder this alone, Lis.”

  For a moment, she felt patronized, then quickly dismissed it. He truly cared for her.

  “I’ll try,” she said, and exited the a
partment.

  Logan sat a chipped Colorado Rockies coffee mug on the table in front of her.

  “How’d you sleep last night?” he asked, making conversation.

  She began nervously kneading her left bicep. “Okay,” she said, not mentioning the only reason she’d felt safe enough to sleep was because Neil had stayed at her side all night.

  “Good, good.”

  He stood adjacent to her, one hand rubbing the back of his neck.

  “Well . . . we just need to get a statement from you about how you found the body. Shouldn’t take too long.”

  There was another period of silence before Sheriff Porter entered the tiny room, ending the uncomfortable exchange. “I’m sorry there’s nowhere better to talk, Elisabeth. Kind of a multipurpose room, I guess.”

  She nodded. They were utilizing the interrogation room for the interview due to the station having no real offices. Desks littered an open floor plan with Jack sitting right out among the others. There wasn’t much need for a huge police force in a town with as low a population as Mitchum, and so little crime. The last time anyone had been murdered was eleven years prior, when Mia and her friends had been found dead at the lake.

  “It’s fine,” she said, before sipping her coffee. “Did you figure out who the woman was?”

  “We did.” He stopped there, obviously debating whether he should share the information with her or not.

  She was shaking under his gaze. Although she knew she’d done nothing wrong, the whole thing made her feel uneasy.

  “We’ll be making it public in a day or two, since the rumors will spread her identity like wildfire anyway.” He pulled the chair opposite Lissy to the side of the table and sat, making it feel less like she was being interrogated.

  “I see.”

  A pause, then, “Did you know Melissa Atwell?”

  She immediately recalled the beautiful newlywed from the restaurant two nights before, and how her deep-black hair caught her attention. The realization that their interaction at the restaurant was probably one of the woman’s last drained the blood from Lissy’s face.

  “I-I met her at the restaurant the other night, actually. Was it her?” It was a dumb question, but Lissy’s mind was far from firing on all cylinders.

  “It was. She just moved to Mitchum. Her husband took some kind of job in the city, but they wanted to live ‘away from it all.’ He’s sleepin’ down the mountain a couple days a week and then drivin’ back up for the rest.”

  “Yeah, she mentioned how excited they were.”

  Porter nodded. “Anyway . . . husband drove in yesterday and couldn’t find her all afternoon. Said she wouldn’t answer his calls. So, in the evening he called us. We’d just started askin’ around town when you phoned it in. We figured she’d just let her phone die or somethin’. Turns out, she’d been askin’ around the other night ’bout the best places to go hikin’.”

  Lissy nodded, taking it all in. Melissa Atwell. Why hadn’t her husband been there for her? She knew it was an unfair thought; he had no reason to suspect she was in any kind of danger. But Lissy couldn’t help it. Melissa had probably been terrified, out there alone, being attacked by whoever or whatever had eventually killed her. She thought of Melissa’s body lying in the mud, burn marks and birds pecking at her skin. She remembered the grotesque gashes down her face, rendering her unrecognizable.

  “Can you tell us how you found her?”

  Lissy told the sheriff that she’d gone to the lake to do some hiking and smelled . . . something, which later turned out to be the body. Then she detailed how she’d seen the birds surrounding something and, between that and the smell, she’d become curious.

  “We figured the birds must’ve gotten to her.” Porter gave Logan a quick nod. “Did she say anything at the restaurant indicatin’ that there was trouble at home?”

  The question threw Lissy. “I’m not following?”

  “Did she say anything that would lend itself to her jumpin’ off that cliff? Or mutilatin’ herself?”

  Lissy was dumbfounded. Did they think Melissa had taken her own life? “She didn’t jump, Jack.”

  The sheriff shifted in his seat. “Whadya mean?”

  “She was ecstatic to be here. Practically gushing. You can call Rose and ask her.”

  “I believe you, hon. It’s just . . . there’s not much else could’ve killed her.”

  Lissy couldn’t fathom what she was hearing. Her heart pounded like a jackhammer. The sheriff was a small-town guy, but she’d never pegged him as unintelligent.

  “Jack, her face was ripped off.”

  The words hung heavy in the air.

  Then, “We did see that. Think it was probably some kind of animal that found her after the fact . . . same as the birds.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “What kind of animal does that to a person and then leaves the body?”

  Jack shifted in his seat again, becoming visibly agitated. “Listen, Elisabeth, that woman’s body had quite a few broken bones. She either jumped off that cliff, fell off that cliff, or was attacked by some kind of incredibly large animal—of which the likes of we’ve never seen ’round here. And to be frank, she wouldn’t be the first jumper we’ve had at them cliffs, and she won’t be the last.”

  Lissy was stunned. It didn’t make sense. There was no way someone who seemed as happy as Melissa killed herself only a handful of hours later.

  Porter sighed and flashed a smile. “You did good, Elisabeth. Anything else you can think of?”

  She found herself at a loss for words. She wanted to fight him, but she had nothing to go on but a tangled mess of feelings and the sense that there was a lot more going on than a couple’s marital troubles.

  “I guess not.”

  “All right.” He stood and offered her a hand. She took it and he helped her to her feet.

  “Have a good’n,” he said, turning to leave.

  “Yeah.”

  Logan gave Lissy a sorry this sucked look on her way out.

  6

  August 18, 2019

  Feeling completely zapped of energy, Lissy carted patrons’ plates back and forth from the kitchen to the dining room without thought. It was the lunch rush, and all the townies were there, carrying on like usual. She knew she shouldn’t, but she found herself resenting them. How could they be so cavalier when a woman had just died a few miles down the road.

  She placed a cutthroat trout on the table in front of Lee Planski. Lee was lead writer and editor of the local paper and one of the few people Lissy regarded as family. He’d eaten lunch in the restaurant every day Lissy had ever worked there, and probably hundreds of times before that. A true creature of habit. He thanked her for the fish and began slicing through the meat. Lee had run a story that morning, less than twenty-four hours after her interview with Porter, that spoke of a newlywed couple moving to Mitchum and the wife jumping from Pine Bluff. The page-three article hadn’t mentioned the gashes on her face, the burns, or even the peck marks on her body. Lissy assumed the sheriff had left out those details in relaying the information to Lee, who wasn’t one to exclude facts when writing an article.

  Lissy was fourteen when she’d first met the reporter from the Mitchum Times. Lee was an up-and-coming writer who had been handed his first big front-page story. It featured four dead teens and a distraught boy who was unable to tell the police exactly what happened. At first, she hated him. Because everything he asked about seemed to be a complete invasion of Lissy and her mom’s privacy. He would ask about their home life, where Mia went to school, where they liked to hang out, how their father died. His questions about her dad were what she didn’t understand. He died when Lissy was a child. How could his death have anything to do with Mia’s death? It took over three years of reading every article Lee wrote about Mia and her friends to realize that he wasn’t a shark. After getting past the initial stages of hating everyone and everything, Lissy was able to appreciate that, while Lee was covering her sister’s story, he wa
sn’t abusing the narrative. All of his probing questions had simply helped him to tell the story of the life lost in as true a manner as possible. And that was something Lissy found herself eternally grateful for. Over time, Lissy, Lee, and her mother had formed an odd bond. He was kind of like the uncle who she saw every once in a while, who also kept an eye on her. He still did. While Lee was never one to pry, he’d been checking in on Lissy every week or so since her mom left Mitchum. It was always the same. He would call, say that he just happened to be talking to her mom recently, and how it reminded him that he should see how Lissy was doing. She supposed it was sweet. But, while she did appreciate his caring, Lee’s looking out for her only served as another reminder that her family was broken.

  Lissy loaded her tray with another round of plates and headed back into the dining room, passing Lee, who was simultaneously perusing his iPad and eating his side salad.

  “Here we are,” she said, divvying out the dishes to a group consisting of mostly people she didn’t know. The only one she recognized was the pseudo leader of the pack, a man named Lawrence Redlin. He ran several of the campsites down the lake and often brought tourists to the restaurant to give them a taste of the best fish this high up the mountain, which he intended to be funny because Rose’s restaurant was the only place to get fish that high up the mountain.

  Lissy sat a large trout in front of Lawrence, and he beamed, rubbing his belly to show his delight. Then obnoxiously—as with most things Lawrence said—he looked to Lissy and said, “Heard you found a jumper over at Suicide Ridge?”

  The tourists traded nervous glances, obviously all more aware than Lawrence that the matter wasn’t as trivial as his tone seemed to imply. Lissy ignored the question, not wanting to encourage him.

  “Can I get you anything else?” she asked the rest of the table. She saw Lawrence’s nostrils flare. He was a showboat who hated not being the center of attention. So, he did what showboats do. He escalated.